


Dead or Alive

by Geonn



Category: Sanctuary (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Crossover, F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:12:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason Ash hadn't seen Jo in Heaven. It's the same reason Helen didn't accept Ashley's death right away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead or Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ninkasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninkasa/gifts).



_Sometimes she is still surprised to wake up in the morning. She breathes deeply, eyes open, flat on her back in the hotel room bed as waits. She waits until something - a noise outside the room, a car passing on the freeway - occurs to let her know she is really alive. Once that happens, she will roll over to slip an arm around her companion's waist. She spoons her close so her partner can wake up in someone's arms. After a moment, the other girl's body tenses and Ashley Magnus kisses her earlobe. She quiets her with soothing whispers. "It's okay," Ashley whispers to Jo Harvelle. "It's okay. We're safe."_

#

Jo's remains were buried with her father's knife. Ashley retrieved it. One night she showed up in their hotel room and placed it on the table. Jo started to ask how she had gotten it, but Ashley was already in the small kitchen looking for dinner. So Jo hooked the sheath on her belt and went into the kitchen to help cook something to eat.

#

Ashley wore sunglasses and a hoodie to conceal her identity. She stayed in the car, and Jo sat on the hood and looked up the street to the castle where Ashley had grown up. In the time they'd been spying on it, she'd seen several people on motorcycles go through the gates, and a black van with its windows completely tinted drove to the loading docks and let out something that sounded big and dangerous.

Finally, Ashley said, "Let's go."

Jo slid off the hood and walked to the driver's side of their navy blue Road Runner. They'd gone over it several times; Ashley didn't want to announce her resurrection until she knew what had caused it, and until she was certain it was permanent. Now she was worried about the fact everyone in her life had mourned her and moved on. She didn't want to disrupt their lives any more than necessary.

"Where to?" Jo asked.

"Out of here."

"I can do that." Jo pulled away from the curb and drove toward the city limits.

#

Ashley's first memory was waking wet, naked, and terrified on the rocky shore of some island she never learned the name of. She walked until she found shelter, scrounged in the cupboards for food, and found clothes that fit her. A day later, another girl arrived in similar disarray. Ashley helped her and they shared what little they remembered of their lives. When they finally decided they couldn't stay in the cabin forever, they set out to figure out what happened to them.

They couldn't change their nature. The first town they visited was being victimized by a nest of creatures Ashley recognized from the Sanctuary database. She and Jo hunted them down and stopped them and, in the process, remembered who they were. Later, at a hotel, they tended to each other's wounds and revealed their life stories. That night they slept - only slept - in the same bed for the first time.

They were in Wyoming when Ashley told Jo about the guy she'd met in a bar. The description left little doubt in Jo's mind as to the man's true identity. Confronted by her past, Jo made the decision not to reveal her survival to the Winchesters. They left immediately for Arizona, driving across the desert. Their car was taken from the victim of one of the monsters they stopped. They were both a little freaked about taking things from dead people, but monster hunting wasn't exactly a paying gig. They had to eat, they had to live, so if the victims weren't using it anymore, where was the harm? Jo said the Winchester brothers fake credit cards was a much bigger moral dent.

The first time they made love was in a small hotel with a window that looked out onto a desolate desert prairie. There was a mesa on the horizon, and Ashley was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at it when Jo sat next to her. Their first kiss was tender, starting on the cheek before they decided to shift position ever so slightly. The difference between a cheek and the mouth was so tiny, hardly worth mentioning, and Jo swept her tongue across Ashley's mouth before lowering her to the mattress.

Ashley quietly apologized and said she'd never been with a woman before. Jo admitted it was new to her, too. They promised to take it slow, and spent the rest of the night experimenting. When the sun rose, they wrapped themselves in a sheet and slept until the noon check-out time.

#

Jo hit the pavement with her ass, her legs sprawled out in front of her as she brought the sawed-off shotgun up. Jo fired and the shell hit the creature just as it pounced at her. She got to her feet and saw Ashley wrapping a chain around the other creature's throat. They looked like frogs with oddly articulated limbs, their faces resembling bats more than anything else. The creature she'd shot was headless now, and the one Ashley was choking thrashed and spit as it tried to get free. Jo racked another shell and pressed the barrel against the creature's temple.

"Watch your face, darlin'." Ashley leaned back as far as she could. When the gun fired, she let go of the chain and jumped back so she wouldn't get hit by the splatter.

The final chiropteranidae fell to the hardwood floor, and the room was silent except for the tinnitus caused by the gunfire in close quarters. Ashley made sure the creature hadn't gotten on her as she crossed the room and jumped onto the bar. She searched the bottles lining the mirror, took down the bottle that looked the more expensive, and poured two glasses.

Eighteen dead bat-frog monsters lay around the room, draped over tables and littering the floor in bits and pieces. Jo pushed a corpse off a stool and sat down. She put down the shotgun and picked up her glass, tapping it against Ashley's as she took a drink.

"And you thought North Dakota would be boring."

Ashley smiled.

#

They gained a reputation. Ashley bought an untraceable cell phone from a dealer in San Francisco and gave the number to a select few of their new contacts. After that, calls started coming in for help. They crossed the country, going from a lindworm in Maine to a balaur in Florida. Occasionally the people who called them offered to pay, and those nights they allowed themselves a night or two at a more luxurious hotel than they were used to.

Ashley took a bubble bath in the Presidential Suite of a New York hotel. One night there cost more than they had paid for an entire year of nights at motels, but they had been paid very, very well. Jo joined her in the bath eventually, and the two took advantage of the various massaging jets the tub offered.

They pretended to be spoiled heiresses, using Daddy's credit card to have a night on the town. When Ashley traced a scar on Jo's hip, Jo rolled her eyes and said, "I simply must find a new plastic surgeon; my latest one signs his work in the worst way."

Over a shared bottle of champagne that cost as much as twenty of their usual meals, they considered changing their last names to give themselves a brand. "Dean and Sam are the Winchesters. We should have a brand like that."

"Harvelle and Magnus. Harnus."

"Everyone already calls us the Blonde Girls."

"Who is everyone?"

"The hunters I used to run with. There are rumors all over the country about us."

Ashley didn't know how to feel about that, so she asked to put off giving themselves a brand for the time being. Jo agreed to put a pin in it, then stripped off Ashley's robe and proceeded to do all kinds of things that didn't cost a dime.

#

"Okay, big boy. Just you and me now, huh?"

The draug increased in size until the wood of the dock started to creak. Ashley looked past the creature to see Jo was on her way, but she would never make it in time. Ashley reloaded as the creature, which was the size of an ox, trundled forward. It was between her and safety and still growing. It lifted its front tree-stump legs and brought them down with a crash. "Sorry, ugly. Looks like you're taking a swim." She fired and, as she feared, the dead weight of the creature hit the dock and the wood finally gave way. They hit the thin ice of Boston harbor and Ashley sank down.

She was still recovering from the shock of the cold when someone grabbed her and tugged her to the surface. She clung to Jo, burrowing into the warmth of her body as she was pulled back to dry land. "I guess it's true what they say. Bigger they are."

Ashley laughed. "Funny. Take me somewhere with a wa-warm bath."

"You got it."

#

The creature insisted their gratitude.

It had dug into Ashley's mind without permission, dredging up everything she'd tried to hard to forget. It accessed the parts she'd forced herself to forget, the memories that she'd allowed to fade. It made her relive the moment she teleported away to save her mother, hitting the EM shield, and dispersed. Her body was ripped apart, cells spread to the winds. But the experiments done on Ashley's blood by the Cabal had been her saving grace. It kept her alive, albeit spread across several miles of land.

The wind carried the incorporeal girl westward. Eventually she was able to coalesce, and her mind erased what had happened to protect her. The creature dug into her subconscious and made her remember exactly how it had felt to be spread so thin, to be ripped into billions of pieces and just float. Ashley wound up passing out from the pain, twitching and helpless as the creature turned its attention on Jo.

It made Jo remember being torn apart, ripped to pieces by hellhounds right before she was blown up by her mother. Jo saw it like a movie played inside her head, the deal Ellen had made with the demon. Ellen sent herself to Hell in exchange for Jo's return to Earth. But the demon lied, erased her memory, and dumped her on an anonymous island with only one inhabitant.

Jo was crippled by the memory of her mother's sacrifice, and the creature was moments away from killing her when Ashley recovered. She remembered her abilities - the vampire's strength and her own father's teleporting ability. Ashley tore the creature apart, killing it many times over just because it felt good.

The creature's last words were: "You should be thanking me."

#

Ashley was sitting on the bed, loading a cargo vest with various shotgun shells and other ammunition they might need. Her hair was pulled back in twin braids that ran down her back, and she wore an olive drab tank top and camouflage pants. Her boots were standing next to her bare feet as she checked to make sure her vest was fully stocked. The hotel room door opened and Jo came inside, dressed in a safari shirt and pants identical to Ashley's. "Hey. I talked to that guy I know. He'll get us across the border, but we'll have to find another way back into the country."

"I could just zort us back." It was their word for Ashley's teleportation ability. They rarely ever relied on it, or her other manifested abilities. Once she remembered she had them, she realized how easy it would be to get lazy. And on the road, laziness could get you killed. "But maybe we shouldn't be in a huge hurry to get back. Canada has as many monsters as the US. And this way we won't run into the Winchesters."

Jo climbed onto the bed and knelt behind Ashley, rubbing her shoulders. "I'm sorry. We keep running into my past, and--"

"I don't mind about that. I just want to be sure we don't make too many waves. I don't want word getting back to... to the people I used to work with."

"Okay. Canada's great. We can see what kind of work we can find up there." She bent down and kissed Ashley's neck. She toyed with the braids until Ashley put down the loaded vest and twisted to face her. "As long as you're there, we could relocate to Australia."

Ashley kissed Jo and spoke against her lips. "I heard there were dingo-eating babies down there."

"Spiders as big as your head."

"I don't do spiders."

Jo snorted. "What a wuss."

Ashley gasped in mock anger and pinned Jo to the mattress. "Take that back, Joanna."

"You gonna make me?"

Ashley grinned. "What time do we have to leave to get across the border?"

Jo twisted to look at the clock on the wall. "Plenty of time for you to teach me a lesson."

Ashley began unbuttoning Jo's blouse. "Well, in that case... class is in session, Miss Harvelle. Take notes. There's gonna be a quiz afterward."

#

"...and we'll leave for Wyoming as soon as possible. It seems a nimeriger has been active near--"

Henry cleared his throat. "That, ah, that's been taken care of." Helen raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, waiting for him to continue. "I was monitoring the news out of that area to make sure there weren't anymore, you know, poisoned arrow attacks before we got to it. Apparently the nest was cleared out by person or persons unknown."

Will said, "Maybe it's one of those hunter groups we've been hearing about."

"Could be." Henry touched his tablet to access the still frame from the security camera footage. He turned the computer around to show everyone else. "They left the scene in a sweet 1974 Road Runner. The hunters do seem to favor muscle cars."

Helen seemed satisfied. "Well. I guess that frees up our day." She leaned forward and looked at the image. Something about the passenger in the car, visible only as an arm resting on the window and a braid of blonde hair.

"Something wrong, Doc?"

"Hm? No. Nothing." She leaned back. "Kate, you mentioned something to do with the Armenian mob? It looks like we may have the time to focus on that after all. Tell me what we know."

#

Dean folded the newspaper and tapped it against his leg as he walked back to the Impala. He grunted as he dropped back behind the wheel, not speaking until Sam said, "Well?"

"Bust. Wasted trip." He tossed the paper onto the dashboard.

"So nobody conjured a chepi to take out their enemies after all? That whole tip about the medicine man and the avenging spirit was just a hoax?"

"Oh, no. It happened. Dwight David Crenshaw, associate manager at the fabulous Dooley Motors, was using the chepi to take out his competition for a promotion. Of course, the chepi got out of control and started killing anyone who so much as looked sideways at good ol' Dwight D."

Sam nodded. "Okay, so let's head out to Dooley Motors and--"

"No need. Someone else broke the spell, sent the chepi back where it came from, and Dwight Crenshaw is now tucked nice and cozy in a cell."

Sam said, "Huh."

"Yep. I'm getting kind of sick of this one-step behind bull crap. One of these days I'm gonna figure out who keeps scooping us and--"

"Thank them for giving us a few actual days off?"

Dean grimaced, slapped his hand on top of the steering wheel and sniffed angrily. "Whatever. I'm hungry. There's a burger joint down the street. Maybe we can get something to eat unless someone else swung by and bought all the burgers five minutes ago."

Sam snickered. "Hey, any time someone else wants to take the risk, as long as they know what they're doing..."

"Yeah, yeah. But if I don't fight a monster soon, I'm gonna start getting rusty. I'll have to find some redneck dogfighters just to keep in shape." He pulled out of the spot and drove away, only taking a cursory notice of the 1974 navy blue Road Runner parked at the local motel as they sped by.

#

 _Sometimes she wakes in the night, certain Ashley won't be there any more. She rolls onto her back, not breathing until she sees the familiar curve of her partner's shoulder. They both sleep in the nude, craving the feel of skin on skin under the blankets. Jo slides close, breasts against Ashley's back, and rests her head on Ashley's shoulder. Lights from the freeway sweep across the hotel room wall, from right to left, and Jo watches them like she's counting sheep. The last number she remembers reaching is twenty-seven, her lips silently forming the number against Ashley's shoulder as she slips back into slumber._


End file.
